Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, has expanded its ongoing legal battle by adding the popular live-streaming platform, Twitch, as a defendant. The amended lawsuit, filed late Monday in federal court in Wichita Falls, Texas, accuses Twitch of conspiring with other companies and the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) to engage in a coordinated boycott of advertising on X, resulting in significant revenue loss for the platform.
The lawsuit, originally filed in August 2023, claims that Twitch, alongside other defendants such as CVS Health, Mars Inc., and Orsted, colluded to withhold billions of dollars in advertising revenue from X following Musk’s acquisition of the platform in late 2022. According to X, this collective action violated U.S. antitrust laws by impeding the free flow of advertising dollars into the platform and harming its financial stability.
Twitch, which is owned by Amazon, was added to the lawsuit after it was revealed that the streaming service stopped purchasing advertising from Twitter (now X) in the U.S. starting in November 2022. While Twitch and its parent company Amazon have yet to respond to the lawsuit, X is seeking damages for the alleged harm caused by this advertising boycott.
In the original lawsuit, X accused the WFA, a global organization representing major advertisers, of orchestrating the boycott as part of an effort to distance itself from the platform’s new direction under Musk’s leadership. The WFA initiated a campaign in 2019 to address concerns about harmful content on digital platforms, particularly the risks of ads appearing alongside false or offensive posts. After Musk’s acquisition of X, several advertisers, including some of the named defendants, reportedly became concerned that their advertisements would appear next to such content, which had been more rigorously moderated under the previous management.
The amended complaint also notes that Unilever, a major consumer goods company, has been dropped from the lawsuit after reaching an agreement with X in October.
The legal battle continues to unfold in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, where Musk’s team aims to prove that the advertising boycott was not only damaging but also unlawful.
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